President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi is expected to meet US President Barack Obama on the fringe of the UN General Assembly in New York today. It will be the first face-to-face meeting between the two men. Relations between Washington and Cairo have been strained for close to a year. Now mutual interests seem to be pushing them closer. Egyptian diplomats insist any Al-Sisi and Obama meeting is less significant than the fact Al-Sisi is in New York in the first place. “He is there. He is representing the country and being welcomed for talks with the UN Secretary General and with heads of states, even if the meetings are brief,” says one Egyptian diplomat. “If anyone was hoping Al-Sisi would have a hard time integrating on the international stage they must be disappointed. He is already integrated.” The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, for one, remains a vocal critic of the new Egyptian regime's commitment to basic freedoms following the army's removal of Mohamed Morsi as president. And Egypt's re-integration in the global order, say foreign diplomats in Cairo, is largely a product of the West's determination to eradicate the influence of extremist Islamist groups, with the Islamic State (IS) top of their agenda. “It's silly to think this war against extremists can be conducted without Egyptian participation, especially given that Egyptian authorities are keen to take part,” says one Cairo-based European diplomat. In an interview with AP before leaving for New York on Sunday, Al-Sisi called for a “comprehensive counter-terrorism” strategy. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Tuesday, he stressed that battling terror cannot stop at IS but must include all groups that subscribe to the same extremist “ideology”. “We cannot reduce the danger lurking in the region to ISIL [Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant]; we need to look at all the pieces of the puzzle,” said Al-Sisi. Promising support for the US war on the Islamic State (IS) group, which started in Iraq and expanded on Tuesday to include Syria, Al-Sisi called for the formation of a “united coalition”. Al-Sisi arrived in New York late Sunday evening, Cairo local time, against the backdrop of an attack that killed three security personnel at the Foreign Ministry, and left several others wounded. He was not short on evidence that terror is a top priority. Tthe Ministry of Interior had promised to announce the identity of the assailants responsible for Sunday's attack later today, and have neither confirmed nor denied the claim of responsibility made by Ajnad Misr(Soldiers of Egypt). But commentators known for their ties with the regime were quick to accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of being behind the attack, with the most cautious suggesting Ansar Beit Al-Maqdes conducted the bombing on behalf of the banned group. The attack, they argue, was intended as a reply to Al-Sisi's suggestion, made in his AP interview, that the door was open for the rehabilitation of Muslim brothers provided they renounce violence. “This is a crucial problem. When we talk about the war on terror we think of groups like IS or Jabhat Al-Nusra in Syria, but in Cairo officials insist that their detention of thousands of members of the Brotherhood is part of the same war. They tell us that we cannot contemplate a war on terror and criticise Egypt's human rights practices,” says another Cairo-based European diplomat. “The trouble is that we have seen no links between, for example, IS and the Brotherhood, and the Egyptian authorities are not providing us with one. They offer rhetoric about shared ideologies and the Muslim Brotherhood being the root of all Islamist groups,” he said. A European diplomat in New York who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly hours after Al-Sisi met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, said the focus of Egypt's president during the meeting at the headquarters of the international organisation was on forming a comprehensive front to fight Islamist groups across the region. Other foreign diplomats say that what Egypt is most keen on is that the war on terror does not exclude the situation in Libya, perceived by Cairo as a potential source of serious cross-border destabilisation. “We feel that, with the exception of a few southern European countries that fear waves of illegal migrants, the world is more concerned with IS in Iraq and Syria than with equally explosive zones, including Libya,” says one highly placed Egyptian source. He added that Egypt is also concerned about the wider Sahara and African Sahel where “there is a huge network of militants and arms smuggling.” But how will this impact on Cairo's desire to see a lessening of the criticism it is facing on its record of respect for human rights? The source smiled. “That goal has already been achieved. The world needs us for its war on radical Islamic groups and it will have to accommodate us.” In his AP interview, Al-Sisi was at pains to stress his commitment to freedoms, with the caveat that freedom of expression does not necessarily top his list. Development, he argued, is perhaps a more pressing right for Egyptians who face massive economic challenges. In his statement made before the UN summit on climate change on Tuesday, Al-Sisi stressed the right of Arab countries to pursue development and economic growth, arguing that the burden such states shoulder in tackling global warming must take into account their urgent need to engineer economic growth. Al-Sisi called on developed countries, financial organisations and the private sector to help Arab states pursue development and overcome the challenges posed by shortages of water and energy. A member of the Egyptian delegation in New York told the Weekly that Al-Sisi's statement to the change summit reiterated points that were made in his meeting with the UN Secretary General. “In essence, the message is that we will determine our own priorities and they are the fight against terror and poverty,” he said. In his interview with AP, Al-Sisi argued that security measures alone will not undo the knot of terror spreading across “Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and the Sinai peninsula.” Economic development, education and the promotion of religious tolerance are just as important in the fight against extremism. Al-Sisi is expected to re-iterate the same points in any meeting with Obama. “The question that Al-Sisi is expected to put to Obama is how far is the US and the rest of the world ready to support economic development in the Arab region as part of the war on terror,” said the Egyptian delegate. The world might be normalising its relations with Egypt's regime on the back of the call for a war on IS but questions will still be asked about how Egypt intends to improve its human rights practices. During Ban Ki-Moon's meeting with Al-Sisi, the UN Secretary General requested the release of the Al-Jazeera crew and of political activists detained for their opposition to the controversial Protest Law. Al-Sisi replied that the matter will be settled through the normal judicial channels, according to the Egyptian delegate speaking from New York. He added that Al-Sisi told the UN Secretary General he was trying to quell “calls for instability and violence in the interest of the Egyptian citizen, not in the interests of the Egyptian authorities.” The same source added that the UN Secretary General was not very assertive in the language used to approach the “file of human rights” and the president made few promises in this respect. “He spoke of the independence of the judiciary, of the recent terror attack in Cairo and the war on terror in Sinai,” the source said. “He spoke of the next parliament and its responsibility to issue legislation to protect society and to ensure that freedoms are not exercised at the expense of stability.” They are, said the delegate, the same points that will be made in any meeting with the US president.
